, and Ireland
about the worst.

One pair of horses in Scotland were then supposed to cultivate fifty
acres of tillage, and in Ireland the average was one horse to five
acres. Indeed it is in both cases much the same to-day.

In reality a farm is a workshop from which you turn out as much produce
as possible. But on an Irish farm it is the habit to squeeze out the
last possible ounce without putting anything in, for it is not run with
an eye on future years, but only in a hand-to-mouth, beggar-the-soil
kind of way, without a thought beyond contemporary exigencies.

There were several other pupils with Bogue, but I stuck to the business
more than the rest, who were perpetually gallivanting into Kelso, or
even going up to Edinburgh, where they learnt nothing which taught them
their trade or put money into their pockets. Therefore it happened that
I was selected by Bogue to have an excellent practical demonstration of
farming, after this wise. He had a pretty sharp illness, and left me for
a short time full management of all his six hundred acres, and that bit
of responsibility made a man of me once and for all. I stepped out of
boyhood instantly, and became an adult in feelings and bearing; but to
this day I hope my sense of fun is only keener than it was as a lad.

I acquired a good deal of common sense in Scotland, and learnt to
observe for myself, a thing many men never acquire, and on their
deathbeds they will never be able to enumerate the opportunities they
have consequently lost.

As I was to be a farmer, I thought it was no use to confine my attention
to the one I was on, but contracted the habit, when work was at all
slack, of going about to pick up what wrinkles I could from other
proprietors, as well as to make observations on my own account.

Subsequently I have made two agricultural tours through Scotland for the
same purpose, getting as far north as Sutherland, in order to find out
how the Highland farmer dealt with more barren soil under a less
propitious climate. I have noted more improvement in farming in Ayrshire
in the interval than in any other county. Yet there is a letter in
existence by Burns in which he observes that Ayrshire lairds are getting
English and East Lothian notions about rents, and raising them so high
that it will soon be a wilderness.

The fact is that the Scotsman is a farmer by nature, but the Irishman is
a farmer by inclination.

An Irishman tries to exist on land cultivate